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Late Phase Capitalism

The song we hear from our rulers is that America was built by immigrants. The other version is that America is a nation of immigrants. The latter does not hold up under scrutiny, but the former probably gets closer to the truth. The nation was obviously settled by people from over the sea and that settlement continued into the 19th century. The word “settler” is correct as most people who came over came in search of land, which is why there was a steady march west during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The last couple of decades of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th, on the other hand, were a time of high immigration. These were people headed for urban centers to work in factories. The new industrial barons wanted cheap labor so they imported it. It is probably true that the rapid industrialization of American could not have happened without the massive flow of migrants from Europe. It is certainly true that the newly minted industrial millionaires got rich from the supply of migrant labor.

By the second decade of the 20th century, the great fortunes of the industrial age had been built. Men were still getting rich, but they were not getting rich like Carnegie, Rockefeller or Mellon. There was also a move to reign in the super rich of the day by busting up trusts and forcing competition back into the market. Again, you could still get rich making stuff, but it was mostly by applying industrial techniques to narrow areas of the economy. Of course, the end of the industrial boom saw the boom in global finance.

The other thing that developed in the late phase of the industrial era was organized crime, most notably La Costra Nostra. The official narrative says it was Prohibition that ignited organized crime, but there were gangsters in America before that event. A better way to frame it is that urban criminal organizations were uniquely positioned to flourish in the era of illegal booze. They had worked out most of the problems that come with organized crime and so they had the people and structures in place to be rum runners on day one.

Prohibition era gangsters were cold blooded killers, for sure, but many were quite innovative in the crime business. Many of the techniques they employed to secure their businesses, territories and settle problems in their organizations are right out of the modern business school. The more famous gangsters could have been successful in legitimate business, but by the time they cam along, the big money from industry had already been made and the doors were closed to newcomers, so they went into crime.

It should also be noted that organized crime did pretty well through the Depression and the Second World War. Things got a little tougher in the post-war era, but the Mafia was still going strong into the 1970’s. The wheels came off for the Mob in the 1980’s, at the dawn of the technological revolution. New laws, but mostly new technology allowed the Feds to roll up the Mafia. The state had also taken over their rackets, like gambling and loan sharking, while foreign cartels took over the drug trades. Today, the mafia is dead.

Like the industrial revolution, the technological revolution has created some fantastically rich men. The difference is that the modern billionaire is most likely making his money from all over the world. Technology has allowed him to get rich because it allowed him to easily do business everywhere. The men who made the railroads were constrained by geography. They had to settle for being rich men in one country. Therefore, they took an active interest in their host country, often being very patriotic and nationalistic.

The new over-class lives globally so they think globally and that has brought problems unique to the technological era. But like the industrial age, the great fortunes were mostly made early on as everyone raced to apply the microprocessor to the big problems of society. Men are still getting rich, but the age of the instant billionaire are largely over. The SnapChat people are probably the last guys to hit the lottery with a killer app. The low hanging fruit has been picked. What’s left is the stuff that is harder to reach.

Another similarity to the industrial age is the role of immigration. As Steve Sailer has pointed out, the tech people were granted an unofficial waiver with regards to labor laws and identity politics. Up until very recent, we have not seen any pressure on Silicon Valley to hire blacks or women. They have relied on an army of helot labor brought over on visas or setup up in camps over in Asia. In many cases, firms have flagrantly violated the laws aimed at curtailing this stuff, without facing much in the way of scrutiny.

In all probability, there will be people in the coming decades who point to the microprocessor revolution and say it was built on the backs of immigrants. Our cosmopolitan grifters already believe this. As with the industrial revolution, it will not be entirely wrong. The more accurate way of stating it is the great fortunes could not have been amassed without cheap foreign labor. The initial work, the groundbreaking work, was done by locally grown pioneers who did the inventing and innovating.

The one main difference between this age and the prior age is we have not seen the growth of organized crime. There are Russian gangsters stealing credit cards and running various financial scams, but nothing like the Italian Mafia. No one has tried to organize tech workers like the mob organized Jewish butchers or the garment industry. The old mob used fear to tax legal business and fearlessness to monopolize illegal business. We are not seeing anything similar, outside of the drug game run mostly by Mexicans.

Part of this is due to the fact that most vice is legal. Gambling is everywhere now, mostly run by the state or state sanctioned enterprises. Booze is everywhere and pornography is on TV. Even prostitution is largely ignored by the state. The only illegal business is drugs and that’s run by Mexican cartels. There’s also that fact that there are many ways for a clever and adventurous person to get rich in politics or the shadier sides of finance. Crime simply does not pay as well as politics or banking.

That may be the way to look at something like the Clinton Foundation and, coming soon, the Obama Foundation. These are not explicitly criminal organizations, but they certainly play outside the spirit of the laws. Obama is out of office and prohibited from running again, but he still controls the Democratic party. The Clintons would be in charge, if not for the fact that the voters took their under boss out in the Tuesday Night Massacre, otherwise known as the presidential election. Even so, the Clinton Family is still a player.

In other words, the analog to the great mafia families of the prior era will be political organizations and operations that work the fringes of the system to rake in huge piles of cash for the people running them. Right now, the best way for a moderately intelligent person to get rich is to win a seat in Congress. Even a seat in the state legislature can be parlayed into a comfortable lifestyle paid for by insider deals and influence peddling. If you are not the sort to run for office, helping those who do run for office is very lucrative.

In one of histories great ironies, the English speaking world went to war with fascism and defeated them on the battlefield, but ended up adopting most of the fascists socio-economic polices. Similarly the US government went to war with the mob, but is now embracing the same ethos as those long vanquished gangsters. Maybe like the oxpecker, the tiny bird that lives off rhinos, human society will always have a quasi-criminal class that lives off the people at the pleasure of the people in charge.

Chinese men were brought over here to build railroads (they were industrious and worked well as a team). They weren’t permitted to bring wives and families or partner with white women, so they often formed relationships with black or native women (my great-grandfather being a product of such a union). We don’t hear much about the considerable presence of Chinese illegals or the Chinese community in general. Perhaps they more easily assimilate into our culture without the factor of violence or financial dependence. The warlords will continue to plunder the treasury until we the people find the will to stop… Read more »

East Asians are not a terribly useful population for the Left to exploit. Discrimination against Chinese was often quite harsh, but they have been a highly successful group and modern Chinese assimilate so enthusiastically, they make for a bad example in the Cold Civil War.

Western railroad builders did have an affinity for Chinese labor though. Europeans took jobs in mining and timber where they seem to prefer the lifestyle. That left the Chinese, but then the engineers discovered the Chinese were really good at laying rails. There’s a lot of contemporaneous data that makes this point. There’s a well known divide in China between rice and wheat farmers. My hunch is we got a lot of rice farmers.

Makes sense. The Taiping Rebellion destroyed South China, i.e. the rice growing region. It was a nice confluence of circumstances for the railroad builders. Too bad they weren’t as wise as we are, though — what with them being “refugees” from a “civil war,” they could’ve been living the high life getting resettled in Minneapolis on the government dime. “Little Peking” would be a hell of a lot nicer, and safer, than “Little Mogadishu.” More opium use though.

i have been told that the overwhelming majority of Chinese -Americans trace their roots back to just a few southern districts in southern Guangdong province, and that is all rice-growing country. The wheat farmers are northerners.

America was in essence the biggest long con in human history founded largely not for freedom but as a tax dodge and a way to opt out of paying the costs of society Freedom was as much a pretext as an ideology, it was really about money To cut costs we started with slavery ,tried mass immigration, forced labor, you name it. Now its on the fail train simply because culturally there is no “there”, there. Even the vaunted WW2 and post war culture was fake, a product of mass media and industrialism and fear of communism All gone now… Read more »

I’d say it’s a bit worse than that. Chinese Diasporas were typically dumb cheap laborers, Malaysia – mine coal for the British, America – build railroads, and yet their descendants are typically intelligent, successful and pro-social. In Malaysia they have to go so far as put strict quotas on Chinese admission to universities, otherwise no Malay could become a doctor or a lawyer.

It’s not just about being a poor weapon in the Cold Civil War, Chinese Diasporas have to be completely ignored because merely looking at them would melt the leftist brain with cognitive dissonance.

They may be economically assimilated, i .e. earning as much if not more than whites, but not culturally. This becomes especially obvious in Europe, where Chinese are just as alien as Moslems or Blacks. The US was kind of doomed from the start (importation of blacks, later of rice-eaters followed by brown-eyed olive-skinned Mediterranids from southern Europe), but Europe might still have a chance.

I know a number of Chinese who have immigrated here. You are correct – they assimilate quite “enthusiastically” . Case in point: A Chinese family moved down the street from my father a few years back. This is a suburban neighborhood with split-level houses. My father became friends with the family – since they both shared some common interests as electrical engineers. A few years went by – and they (the Chinese family) decided to move to NH and get out of MA. They didn’t like the liberal attitude or the high taxation. Apparently when he moved to NH, they… Read more »

>The men who made the railroads were constrained by geography. They had to settle for being rich men in one country. Therefore, they took an active interest in their host country, often being very patriotic and nationalistic. Not so-they became globalists right away. Examples: https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-5.pdf https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_Hitler.pdf The modern “globalist” oligarchs have absolutely nothing on them. How many revolutions have Gates, Zuckerberg, Thiel sponsored? Granted, it’s early yet. >The one main difference between this age and the prior age is we have not seen the growth of organized crime. Well, wait for the system to crash a little. What happened in… Read more »

Like the mobsters of yesteryear, our corrupt politicians have to know the basic rules and while getting comfortably rich, not get too greedy. Bob Menendez is probably going down this year because he just couldn’t help himself yet again. And like Hillary, he didn’t use a bag man.

“In one of histories great ironies, the English speaking world went to war with fascism and defeated them on the battlefield, but ended up adopting most of the fascists socio-economic polices.” The US Government worked with Italian Mafia to replace Mussolini’s fascists in Italy, to take over running the nations’ bureaucracy and infrastructure so the Allies did not have to. I believe the OSS also worked with them to in their covert operations they conducted as well, because, hey, criminals are pretty good at organized hiding and getting about, and have connections Then you have Operation Paperclip, where the US… Read more »

I’m no FDR fan, but in early 1945 the Red Army was in full control of E Europe and Japan still held most of Asia. So aside from launching WWII 1/2 against Russia as a de facto ally of Japan, there was little that could have been done for E Europe at that time. By the end of 1945 following the surrender of Japan, continuing the war against the USSR to free E Europe would have likely resulted in the revolution in the US that so many elite fellow-travelers were so fervently working towards. Re Churchill’s single-mindedness, the correlation of… Read more »

Karl; Look at the date of the invasion. My point was that had we gone to war with the USSR in early-to-mid 1945 to liberate E Europe from the Red Army, or threatened or even hinted at it, the Russian 8/9/45 offensive against Japan’s empire in mainland Asia would never have happened for good and obvious reasons. Thus the geo-strategic danger to Japan would have been greatly reduced to our detriment by pushing for E Europe’s liberation. The Japanese general staff had plans to transfer most of their China garrison (which was most of their army) to Japan proper to… Read more »

General George Patton’s opinion of the fighting capability of the commies in 1945, in conversation with U.S. Secretary of War Robert Patterson: “I understand the situation. Their (the Soviet) supply system is inadequate to maintain them in a serious action such as I could put to them. They have chickens in the coop and cattle on the hoof — that’s their supply system. They could probably maintain themselves in the type of fighting I could give them for rive days. After that it would make no difference how many million men they have, and if you wanted Moscow I could… Read more »

Patton talked a lot. The Red Army used a lot of expedient methods, and its men often operated on a shoestring. However, the Soviet supply system was enough to take them from the outskirts of Moscow to Berlin, and to sustain advances of 60km per day over multiple days, on many occasions. It was enough to get them across the Great Khingan and capture Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and North Korea in a week and a half, moving mechanized armies across deserts and mountains. Patton of course was a very distinguished general, and was great at maneuver warfare, but he never… Read more »

It’s an interesting question. British and American material kept the Soviets from collapsing. Lend-Lease provided billions in material. For instance, the US provide 400,00 trucks and 11,000 aircraft. By the time the Red Army reached Berlin, the Soviets had rebuilt some of their manufacturing capacity, but not enough to sustain the sort of losses Patton could have inflicted, assuming he had full support. It’s not unreasonable to think the Red Army would have collapsed. Patton was one of the great improvisational generals in US history. His relief of Bastogne is on the list of the things that should not be… Read more »

The list of great Russian generals known widely outside Russia is one guy. Napoleon’s army did not kick itself out of Russia. Neither did the Swedes in their heyday, nor the Turks. (You know 1941 wasn’t the first time they took Berlin, right?) Guys like Zhukov, Konev and Rokossovsky made their bones dealing with the Germans in their heyday, in 1941-43, and ground them up. Something like 75% of German losses happened on the Eastern Front. Regarding maneuver warfare, they drove the Germans from the Caucasus all the way across the Ukraine, Hungary and the Balkans, across mountain ranges. That… Read more »

Patton’s assertion was that the Soviets had no meaningful supply train and had largely lived off the land as they pushed the Germans back into Germany. Once they made it to Berlin, there was nothing but blasted waste to their rear. Patton saw that if he forced the Soviets back the way they came, they would be badly constrained logistically as they had basically made a one-way trip. Frankly, if I had to choose between the tactical and strategic judgement of one of the greatest military commanders of all time, and a random internet commenter, I’d pick Patton every time.… Read more »

Patton may have been able to pull it off, but if he made even one mistake early in attack, and failed to cut off them off, the Sov’s tactical superiority in armor would have made scrap iron of the US tanks. We had few of the new Pershing’s, and the Sherman was not the equal of the Soviet armor any more than they were of the German ones. I also don’t think the US troop morale or the civilians at home would have stood for it. The average Russian solider was resigned to fatalistically fight to the death, but not… Read more »

My father was in Patton’s 3rd Army from ’43 until ’46 in Europe & Germany. It was more than a popular rumor that Wild Bill Donovan & the OSS assassinated Patton in that auto accident b/c of his unsquelchable big mouth talking up a potential WW3, “We’ll eventually have to fight the Soviets in Europe so let’s do it while we have the army here…” — it was accepted as common knowledge, but we’ll never know. It was probably just as it appeared, a simple fatal accident. Ironically I think Stalin would’ve welcomed a land war vs. the exhausted Allies… Read more »

I don’t believe we had to engage the Sovs in, but we sure could have done better negotiating at Yalta and elsewhere. Should of told them, “Hey, you guys made your bed with Germany, and gave them the raw materials to invade Europe. Too bad they suckered punched you, but that’s honor among thieves. BTW, we gave you a lot of war materiel at great cost, and own you nothing. So we’ll keep whatever we take, instead giving up Czechoslovakia and anything our troops take over.”

The decline of communities also killed the Mob. If nobody’s from anywhere, and nobody stays there, what’s the point of organized crime in “the old neighborhood”? NOT saying the Mob, or the IRA, or what have you, was *good,* but they did base a lot of their appeal on “helping” their community. What can Vito from Mulberry Street do for the community these days?

To piggyback on your point, there are certainly different kinds of organized crime. Organized crime runs both West Baltimore and Providence, one is a disaster, the other is a perfectly nice place to live.

Yes, Providence has been run by the successors to Patriarca and it is a pleasant place to live in many respects.

But, what mafia “family” runs West Baltimore? I wasn’t aware of anything more organized than the typical black street gangs (e.g. Bloods, Crips, countless gangs on the southside of Chicago) one finds in most large American cities.

The people observe the gods of their ruling elite. When your elite is largely Jewish, you worship Mammon. You can have the old norms of gentility and forthright dealing back only when the grifter elites are displaced.

Even on the low end, politics has been feather bedded to such a high level.
Isn’t a congressman’s pension around $180,000 for life and that for serving just 2 years? Let alone what they can steal and swindle and then get sweet heart positions when they leave.

The old stories how Truman was broke when he left office or Nixon’s financial problems seem quaint. Not that I feel the least bit sympathy but look at the high plains grifters we have now. Even that perve Dennis Hastert had millions of which he used some for hush money.

My mistake on that,still better than any other private sector of course. CRS, June 13: Members of Congress are eligible for a pension at the age of 62 if they have completed at least five years of service. Members are eligible for a pension at age 50 if they have completed 20 years of service, or at any age after completing 25 years of service. The amount of the pension depends on years of service and the average of the highest three years of salary. By law, the starting amount of a Member’s retirement annuity may not exceed 80% of… Read more »

There have been attempts at “organizing” tech workers – with calls to unionize . For the most part – they get extremely limited traction, with only the most slacker level workers even giving them an audience. I have worked in high tech for 20 years now – and while there is definitely a population of imports – they’re not predominant. At least not where I have worked – which is in hardware and in “internet” companies. The call to unionization in tech falls on deaf ears because at least among the start up crowd – there is a definite realization… Read more »

Tommy Lucchese figured out that the kosher chicken butchers union operated like a secret society. So, he bullied his way into controlling the union, this controlling a key node in the meat packing business. This let him control a small union to control the rest of the labor force. He then levered this into the garment industry, as truck drivers are truck drivers.

It helps that many of the shot caller gangsters of the era were Jews themselves. The idea that the Italians were pushing the Tribe around in the same era that the Tribe was throwing WASPs out of their ultimate position in society is just another eposode of revisionism and pop history.

Can you reveal more about your work situation? I have worked in the tech sector (hardware and software) for almost 30 years–large, global multinational corporations which we all know and love /s/. I work in the trenches of the technology, i.e., not in the softer sides of tech companies like marketing, finance, or HR. My experience is the polar opposite of yours. I rarely encounter a white person anymore. On the hardware side maybe 5%-10% of the people who do the actual tech work are white, 90% are Asian/Indian/MENA, and a few “other” just for good measure. Whites are more… Read more »

I worked in the Silicon Valley the last 20 years & can tell you the H1N visa program is a leveraged scam in the guise of globalism. It’s the the cheap skilled tech scam what am that put hundreds of thousands of Americans out of high-paying tech jobs & reinforced the advent of the Gig Economy & Right to Work scams that made employees disposable & the eventual ownership Society scam that disenfranchised the working class & made the oligarchy so much richer..

Asians (including Indians) outnumber whites in Silicon Valley. Thanks to H1-B program. Many articles have been written covering the economic reality of the H1-B program *depressing* salaries for everyone in tech (except those who hit the jackpots).

Most people tend to tolerate corruption as long as the plates keep spinning (rising tide lifts all boats sort of thing). This will continue until wealth derived from foreign-based labor can no longer be consumed in the US via the promise of a future payback. What happens when they figure out that they’re not getting anything back? You can’t exactly walk across the ocean to complain. Universal scamming is the last vestige of a dying civilization.

Making a lot of money will tend to be a matter of providing services on a large scale or in finding a way to skim a little off of the transfers of things between parties. Making things will be risky because someone may be able to beat you at your own game without government protection. I think, or rather hope that the ability to get rich in politics is a phase we are going through. It could be that the administrative managerial state that we hate so much could end up standardizing the interactions between government and business to the… Read more »

My understanding is that organized crime moved on from even drugs because there was so much more money to be made in hacking/cybercrime. Not exactly an unbiased source but man they throw around some big numbers:

Among currently fashionable “crimes”, I would include the charity- fundraising scam, which would also include as a subvariety, the political fundraising advisors. Then the is the investment Pump-n-Dump stock venture. And of course all the telemarketing and robocall scams, many of which seem to be rum by South Asians.And also the whole field of Diversity shakedowns, PUSHed by the rear-end Jesse Jackson.

I did some posts on the think tank rackets. It’s basically money laundering. Rich guy X can’t bring his favorite pol, but he can give to a think than that happens to employ friends and family of the pol. Alternatively, the think tank shakes down rich guys in exchange for pumping out their agit-prop and helping the favorite pol write legislation. The most cynical variety don’t actually do much of anything, but they get plenty of suckers who want to feel like insiders. Magazines like Mother Jones and National Review run the cruise scams where they charge triple the normal… Read more »

IDK, the DNC, the Democrat donors and media sure are acting like a mafia. It’s all inside stuff… everyone is married to one another…. huge amounts of graft and collusion, fraud, intimidation and money. Lots of money…. and for now…. they are ALL above the law. No one can touch them cause they run the place. Like NYC back in the day.

“…but ended up adopting most of the fascists socio-economic polices.” Uh, you sure about this ZMan? You might want to check your facts. German NSDAP social and economic policies transformed a ruined country in 1933 into an economic powerhouse within five years, raising living standards and giving hope to a people who had been thoroughly looted by a weak and corrupt Weimar regime. The NSDAP actually cared about its constituents and enacted and enforced policies that made their lives better. Comparing that to our modern globalist economy, which is a full-on asset-stripping and looting operation, does a great disservice to… Read more »

The NSDAP were not Catholic Authoritarians determined to impose the status-quo ante: a stasis ridden corporatist society with rigid hierarchy and the primacy of the Church and the Aristocracy. See Juan Peron, Alberto Salazar, and Francisco Franco. Ironically Mussolini was too much of a futurist to qualify as full Fascist in that sense. Rather they had the good luck to inherit German rather than Portugese or Italian or Russian workers, stopped paying War Reparations, and had a massive military buildup. Reagan’s military spending sopped up a lot of left-over Carter era unemployment, the late Stephen Ambrose gave a lecture on… Read more »

0. American & USSR armies roughly equal in number on VE Day. 1. Everyone looks at the map and assumes an Allied invasion of Russia meant marching into the teeth of the Red Army from west to east sort of like Napoleon & Hitler did, but with resistance starting in Berlin. Yep, that would be a tough nut though I think Patton was right and that it could be done that way. 2. Thing is, why would we march cross-wise against all those N/S river systems when we had a humongous amphibious capability, as was proved with the invasion of… Read more »

Hitler outlined the future almost exactly what he prescribed in Mein Kampf as it transpired in 1940. Germany wanted restitution of all the colonies & European provinces taken from them by the Versailles Treaty plus a few cherries on top like the Belgian Congo (quite a coveted bauble in the 1940s after diamonds were discovered there). Back channel negotiations were enacted with Britain as France fell & the retreat to Dunkirk with its impending doom for the British empire on the near horizon, but Churchill’s ascension was the X-factor then. Rommel was livid as his panzers were halted at the… Read more »

I’d like to add that I’m not unsympathetic to the classic Fascists, they at least saw a model that had provided stability and a sense of purpose and was part of their latin authoritarian heritage. They were not futurists like Mussolini or Neo Roman revivalists like Hitler or hideous tyrants like Stalin bent on being the most murdery Tsar ever. Most essentially wanted to be the Duke of Milan. And there were far worse things in Europe than the Duke of Milan. As models go, it was a hell of a lot better than most of the alternatives. Certainly better… Read more »

If you’re not sure about the future, just watch/rent Wall-e, the Pixar film. They’ve been right so far. Just replace “cheap foreign labor” with “robots”. As global living standards rise, cheap slave labor will be harder to come by. What actually remains as places like China, India, and Mexico become too expensive will be workers in other parts of the world who are too stupid, too violent, too criminal to do useful things. That means robots, and lots of them. There’s already a sense that robots will have to be taxed like labor in order to subsidize the welfare state.

“The men who made the railroads were constrained by geography. They They had to settle for being rich men in one country. Therefore, they took an active interest in their host country, often being very patriotic and nationalistic.” True, even the scions of late phase oligarchical families who made it big industrially & government like the Kennedys, Bushes & Fords signed up for WW2. Once the US evolved into the last remaining superpower the upper castes no longer served in the military & the all-volunteer military became viewed as a place for suckers. Note that it was the draftee army… Read more »